Detainee Death from Kidney Infection Highlights Broken Policy in Washington State
by Michael Thompson
Statistics provided by the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) show that 39 people died in state prisons in 2024. The annual death rate rose during the COVID-19 pandemic and has stayed high since. And while the DOC has been required since 2021 to report when someone in their care dies “unexpectedly,” the information provided is often limited or even omitted altogether.
Alex Kuhnhausen was one of at least four people who died while in DOC custody in 2024 due to an infection. But that information was not easy to acquire for his grieving widow, Katie. She and others who have lost their loved ones have had to demand records and answers from the DOC. In Katie’s case, records showed that the DOC questioned its own role in her husband’s death. One note in the records suspected that placing Alex in solitary confinement contributed to his death.
Washington’s DOC had claimed in 2021 that they stopped using solitary confinement as punishment. Instead, “administrative segregation” is used as a temporary placement “pending investigation for behaviors that represent a significant threat.” Yet, when Alex was caught using a homemade needle to inject the opioid addiction treatment drug suboxone intravenously, his hearing officer sentenced him to 30 days of solitary confinement and stripped him of “good time.”
Alex told them at the time he was producing blood when he coughed or sneezed. Despite the context of the IV use of a homemade needle, they missed the blood infection that killed him. What he received instead was a physician’s assistant’s assessment that he had an oral fungal infection. He threw up all night that evening, and slept through the next day. That led another physician’s assistant to assess he suffered from opioid withdrawal.
Roughly two weeks into his segregation, Kate tried to visit Alex but was turned away because he was too weak to see her. Alex told a nurse on April 21 he had not eaten or drunk in two days. The nurse responded, “diet as tolerated” and “continue medications.” Katie was sent home with no news. Meanwhile, another nurse came on shift and called an ambulance, but it was already too late. The hospital found sepsis, kidney failure, and a “high probability” of death. He was airlifted to Spokane 24 hours later and, only after that would Katie learn what was happening. On April 24, doctors intubated Alex but were barred from contacting Katie by a guard. An hour after the DOC finally notified her, Alex was dead.
Attorney Nathan Roberts reviewed Alex’s files and concluded, “This is a sad case of DOC converting a relatively short prison sentence to a death sentence, through denial of competent healthcare.” Alex was even denied an autopsy that may have helped fill in some of the many blanks.
In a cruel twist of fate, had Alex kept his good time, in just two days after he was placed in solitary, he would have been released and doctors on the outside likely might have saved his life.
Source: InvestigateWest
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